Case Demonstration of Environmental Cuing and Brief Supervision Monitoring as Performance Management Interventions with Educational Care Providers

Abstract

The present study evaluated two interventions to improve task completion-data recording by two classroom instructors at a school for children and youth with neurodevelopmental disorders. Compared to a baseline phase, intervention through environmental cuing (strategic task scheduling) was ineffective. The addition of brief supervision monitoring (task preview and review) increased task completion-data recording to high levels and the improved performance of the classroom instructors and was sustained one month following the study in the absence of intervention. Social validity assessment documented high approval of and satisfaction with brief supervision monitoring. We discuss these findings with reference to practical and efficient methods of performance management that can be implemented with care providers in educational services settings.     

A Test of the Adams-Creamer Decay Hypothesis for the Timing of Motor Responses

The Adams-Creamer hypothesis states that S uses the decay of proprioceptive feedback from an early portion of a movement to cue a timed response at some later time. This hypothesis was tested by creating passive left-arm movement in one group and withholding it from another, and having Ss make a right-hand response when exactly 2.0 sec. had elapsed since the end of the movement Ss with left-arm feedback had less absolute and algebraic error, and greater within-S consistency than did the no-movement control Ss and, when KR was withdrawn, Ss with left-arm movement regressed less than did Ss without the left-arm movement, which provided 2 lines of support for the decay hypothesis.     

Online measurement of mental representations of complex spatial decision problems: Comparison of CNET and hard laddering

This paper introduces the online Causal Network Elicitation Technique (CNET), as a technique for measuring components of mental representations of choice tasks and compares it with the more common technique of online ‘hard’ laddering (HL). While CNET works in basically two phases, one in open question format and one as guided linking of attributes and benefits, HL works completely structured with revealed attributes and benefits. Mental representations of two activity travel tasks were collected with both techniques among members of a nationwide Dutch household panel. The results confirm the hypothesis that the revealed format of variables in HL has an effect on the indication of variables as the elicited mental representations are almost twice as big for HL than for CNET. Furthermore, it turned out that CNET is more sensitive in measuring shifts among attributes in the mental representations for situational changes of the activity-travel task.     

团队决策及其影响因素

随着组织结构的变化,团队决策为越来越多的组织所采用。该文将团队决策的研究范式概括为以下四类：社会决策图式（social decision scheme, SDS）、信息取样模型（information sampling model）、项目排序任务（ranking item task）团队以及组织中以安全优先的团队（safety priority team）;并从影响团队决策的因素,提高团队决策质量的策略等角度分别对四类团队决策的研究进行探讨,在此基础上本文对未来研究进行了展望     

A polynomial time algorithm for Zero-Clairvoyant scheduling

In the design of real-time systems, it is often the case that certain process parameters, such as the execution time of a job are not known precisely. The challenge in real-time system design then, is to develop techniques that efficiently meet the requirements of impreciseness, while simultaneously guaranteeing safety. In a traditional scheduling model, such as the one discussed in [M. Pinedo, Scheduling: Theory, Algorithms, and Systems, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1995. [23]]; [P. Brucker, Scheduling Algorithms, second ed., Springer, 1998. [3]], the tendency is to either overlook the effects of impreciseness or to simplify the issue of impreciseness by assuming worst-case values. This assumption is unrealistic and at the same time, may cause certain timing constraints to be violated at run-time. Further, depending on the nature of the constraints involved, it is not immediately apparent, what the worst-case value for a given parameter is. Whereas, in traditional scheduling, constraints among jobs are no more complex than those that can be represented by a precedence graph, in case of real-time scheduling, complicated constraints such as relative timing constraints are commonplace. Additionally, the purpose of scheduling is to achieve a schedule that optimizes some performance metric, whereas in real-time scheduling the goal is to ensure that the imposed constraints are met at run-time. In this paper, we study the problem of scheduling a set of ordered, non-preemptive jobs under non-constant execution times. Typical applications for variable execution time scheduling include process scheduling in Real-Time Operating Systems such as Maruti, compiler scheduling, database transaction scheduling and automated machine control. An important feature of application areas such as robotics is the interaction between execution times of various processes. We explicitly model this interaction through the representation of execution time vectors as points in convex sets. This modeling vastly extends previous models of execution times as either single points or range-bound intervals. Our algorithms do not assume any knowledge of the distributions of execution times, i.e. they are Zero-Clairvoyant. We present both sequential and parallel algorithms for determining the existence of a Zero-Clairvoyant schedule. To the best of our knowledge, our techniques are the first of their kind.     

A COMPARISON OF THREE STAFF-MANAGEMENT PROCEDURES

Even though administrators must have effective staff-management procedures to ensure implementation of desired programs, many traditional staff-management procedures remain unevaluated. This study investigated the effectiveness of three such procedures. The administrator of an institution for the retarded (1) sent a memo instructing all staff to lead daily recreational activities, (2) sponsored a workshop teaching staff to lead such activities, and (3) assigned staff activity leaders and provided performance feedback to staff by publicly posting the daily average number of active residents on each ward. Neither the memo nor the workshops motivated staff to lead activities, but after staff were scheduled to lead such activities and given performance feedback, the average daily number of residents engaged in activities on four wards for 95 retarded persons increased from seven to 32. The administration of this facility has adopted similar procedures to maintain such activities on all wards.     

An Approach for Determining the Mix between Human and Automated Service Providers

With the growing popularity of self‐service technologies (SST), businesses have to determine how to combine traditional human service with SST technologies. These mix problems have not received adequate attention in the research literature. This paper offers a decision model for solving mix problems between human service channels and SSTs. The decision problem cannot be determined as a traditional max or min problem and it is fuzzy. In fuzzy problems, the decision maker (DM) is considered as the focal point with the relevant knowledge and preferences and therefore, the objective is to maximize the DM's preferences. This paper develops a decision support system for eliciting a DM's value function when the service channels are considered to be substitutes, but when the rate of substitution may change and then uses a linear‐fractional model to fit the DM's data and optimize the DM's preferences. A service mix problem for a grocery store with human service providers and SSTs is used to demonstrate how the decision model can be employed to analyze and solve service mix decision making problems. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Activity rescheduling: reasoned or habitual?

Utility maximization is widely used to model individuals’ activity scheduling and rescheduling behavior. Utility maximization is based on the assumption that the modeled behavior is the result of a reasoned decision. An alternative to a planned behavior is habitual behavior, whose execution process has become automatic due to its repeated performance. Compared to activity scheduling, little is known about the activity rescheduling behavior. In this paper, we focus our attention on the rescheduling behavior. We step back and ask a basic question: is the activity rescheduling behavior reasoned or habitual? Our initial expectation is that rescheduling behavior is mostly habitual behavior due to its feature of repeated performance. We answer this question by conducting an experiment. Results from the experiment confirm our original null hypothesis that rescheduling behavior is mostly a habitual behavior.     

Constructing robust crew schedules with bicriteria optimization

Optimization‐based computer systems are used by many airlines to solve crew planning problems by constructing minimal cost tours of duty. However, today airlines do not only require cost effective solutions, but are also very interested in robust solutions. A more robust solution is understood to be one where disruptions in the schedule (due to delays) are less likely to be propagated into the future, causing delays of subsequent flights. Current scheduling systems based solely on cost do not automatically provide robust solutions. These considerations lead to a multiobjective framework, as the maximization of robustness will be in conflict with the minimization of cost. For example crew changing aircraft within a duty period is discouraged if inadequate ground time is provided. We develop a bicriteria optimization framework to generate Pareto optimal schedules for the domestic airline. A Pareto optimal schedule is one which does not allow an improvement in cost and robustness at the same time. We developed a method to solve the bicriteria problem, implemented it and tested it with actual airline data. Our results show that considerable gain in robustness can be achieved with a small increase in cost. The additional cost is mainly due to an increase in overnights, which allows for a reduction of the number of aircraft changes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Potential dropouts in a longitudinal study: Prevalence,stability, and associated characteristics

This study quantifies the prevalence and associated characteristics of subjects in a longitudinal study who are difficult to schedule and thus may become potential study dropouts. Although subject attrition over three years remained extremely low, many families were difficult to schedule for their assessments and this remained rather constant over time. Intercorrelations between the measures of scheduling difficulty were high, indicating good internal validity of the constructs. Stability of these measures from year to year was low, making it difficult to predict which families required more staff effort or were at risk for dropping out of the study in any one year. Race appeared to be associated with several measures of scheduling difficulty, while psychiatric characteristics of the sample were less so.